Abstract
The experimental studies were conducted in 2007-2008, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 crop seasons, in order to know the agro-economic yield of 'Chinês' and "Macaquinho" taro clones, propagated using huge, extra, large, medium, small and tiny cormels. The harvest was done on average on 202 days after planting, in three crop seasons. Based on the joint analysis of variance carried out, it was observed that taro clones showed significant differences in the yield of fresh and dry weight of leaves, cormels, and commercial and non-commercial comels; besides, there were significant differences in yield of a crop season to another and the size of the cuttings induced significant differences in yield. In the conditions that the experiments were conducted, and considering the highest average yield of fresh weight of commercial cormels (28.69 t.ha-1) and highest net income (US $14,741.14) correspondent to the three crop seasons, it is recommended to cultivate 'Macaquinho' clone using small cuttings in propagation.
Highlights
More than 800 species of Araceae have economic or ethnobotanic importance, and about 10% of the world population use as food ingredient the taro rhizome Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott, popularly known in most countries like "taro" (Pedralli et al 2002)
Taro has common occurrence in the humid tropics and it is used in tropical agriculture as food in developing countries, due to its rich contents of starch, large production per unit area and low manpower demand (Heredia Zárate et al 2009)
According to the previously stated, this study aimed to know the agro-economic yield of two taro clones, propagated using six types of cuttings grown in three crop seasons
Summary
More than 800 species of Araceae have economic (ornamental, edible or medicinal) or ethnobotanic importance, and about 10% of the world population use as food ingredient the taro rhizome Colocasia esculenta (L.) Schott, popularly known in most countries like "taro" (Pedralli et al 2002). Taro presents possibilities for human use in different forms of preparation, and can replace, in whole or in part, potato, cassava, corn, wheat and other starchproducing species (Vilpoux 2001, Heredia Zárate et al 2005). Taro has common occurrence in the humid tropics and it is used in tropical agriculture as food in developing countries, due to its rich contents of starch, large production per unit area and low manpower demand (Heredia Zárate et al 2009) It is vegetatively propagated crop and the base of the main stem, suckers or cormels are used as propagules (Lebot 2009, Sardos et al 2012). These producers have in common limitation of the physical area, which hampers the exploitation of the species because of the long crop cycle, on average nine months (Gondim et al 2007)
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